Neologisms in Harry Potter books - TRABAJO DE FIN DE GRADO Marina Martínez Carbajal. Tutor: María Belén López Arroyo. Curso 2013-2014

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Neologisms in Harry Potter books - TRABAJO DE FIN DE GRADO Marina Martínez Carbajal. Tutor: María Belén López Arroyo. Curso 2013-2014
FACULTAD de FILOSOFÍA Y LETRAS

DEPARTAMENTO de FILOLOGÍA INGLESA

       Grado en Estudios Ingleses

   TRABAJO DE FIN DE GRADO

 Neologisms in Harry Potter books.

      Marina Martínez Carbajal.

   Tutor: María Belén López Arroyo.

          Curso 2013-2014

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ABSTRACT

The object of this paper is to achieve a complete vision of neologisms through a corpus
linguistic analysis, using Harry Potter books as cornerstone for the analysis. The project
has been divided into two stages: the first one consists on a manual selection of the most
representative neologisms throughout the saga with a view to classify them according to
Cabré’s distinction.

The last part of the analysis delves into the collocations of a selected number of
neologisms in order to demonstrate that the open-choice principle stated by Sinclair is
also accomplished in neologisms.

   Neologisms – Corpus Linguistics – Open-choice principle – Cabré – Collocations

El objetivo de este trabajo es conseguir una visión completa de los neologismos a través
del estudio del corpus lingüístico. El análisis se ha dividido en dos fases: la primera
consiste en una selección manual de los neólogismos más representativos a lo largo de
la saga con la intención de clasificar los según la distinción enunciada por Cabré.

En la última parte del análisis, se profundiza en las colocaciones de un selecto número
de neologismos para demostrar que el open-choice principle enunciado por Sinclair
también se cumple en neologismos.

  Neologismos – Corpus Lingüístico – Open-choice principle – Cabré - Colocaciones

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Contents
1.Introduction: .................................................................................................................. 7

   1.1. Structure of the study. ............................................................................................ 7

   1.2. A brief introduction to Harry Potter’s Universe .................................................... 8

   1.3. Neologisms in the saga .......................................................................................... 9

2. Theoretical Background .............................................................................................. 9

   2.1 Neologisms ............................................................................................................. 9

   2.2 Terminology.......................................................................................................... 10

   2.3 Lexicography ........................................................................................................ 11

   2.4 The art of making-dictionaries .............................................................................. 11

   2.5 Semantics .............................................................................................................. 12

   2.6 Open-choice principle ........................................................................................... 12

3. Methodology and Corpus: .......................................................................................... 12

   3.1 Characteristics of the corpus ................................................................................. 12

   3.2 Methodology. ........................................................................................................ 13

4. Analysis. ..................................................................................................................... 15

   4.1 Qualitative Analysis .............................................................................................. 15

   4.2 Quantitative Analysis ............................................................................................ 15

      I. Selection of neologisms ....................................................................................... 16

      II. Verification of semantic neologism’s candidates ............................................... 23

      III. Study of the most frequent neologisms’ collocations ....................................... 33

      IV. Open-choice principle in neologisms ................................................................ 34

   4.3 Results ................................................................................................................... 41

5. Conclusions ................................................................................................................ 45

6. References .................................................................................................................. 47

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1. Introduction:

Since JK Rowling published the first book of the saga in 1997, Harry Potter books have
become a phenomenon that has been moved from literature to films, achieving great
results in both fields. After overcoming the limit of 400 millions of copies sold in 2008,
the impact of the saga is inarguable.

The final goal of this paper will be to analyze one of the most relevant elements in the
saga: neologisms. With this purpose in mind, the study will be made using a corpus-
based approach (Tognini-Bonelli, 2001:65). The analysis will be divided into two parts;
in the first part, the most representative neologisms in the saga will be identified and
defined, with the intention of grouping them in a database.

The classification will be made according to Cabré’s subdivision of neologisms,
distinguishing between        neologismos de forma, neologismos semánticos            and
neologismos sintácticos which will be renamed in the analysis as morphological,
semantic and syntactic neologisms respectively. (Cabré, 2006:231).

The second part of the analysis will be focused on the semantic prosody of a selected
number of neologisms. With the view of limiting our analysis to those neologisms that
have a really representativeness in the saga, the words selected for the study have to
represent half of the total amount of the appearances of neologisms.

The study will try to illustrate through examples how neologisms are affected by
context, analyzing the appearances of each neologism in the different books. In that
point of the analysis, there will be a special attention to collocates and how they affect
neologisms, but also if there is any conjunct of words that tend to be together,
confirming the open-choice principle announced by Sinclair (Sinclair, 1991:109).

1.1. Structure of the study
The study is divided into different sections: after a brief introduction of the context of
the books and the reasons of their selection, the following section consists on a
theoretical approach in which the main concepts that are developed in the subsequent
analysis are explained.

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The third segment contains the notions related to the methodology and corpus. Apart
from the characteristics of the corpus, a detailed description of the criterion that has
been followed to determine the search is included. In addition to that, the third point
includes the development of the analysis as a descriptive analysis of neologisms.

In the fourth section, the results obtained in the previous analysis are interpreted with
the view of relating them to the theoretical approaches described in the first section.

After the interpretations of the analysis, the conclusion section extracts some general
features from the analysis in relation to neologisms and their common features. Finally,
the last subdivision is dedicated to break down the consulted sources for the elaboration
of that work.

1.2. A brief introduction to Harry Potter’s Universe
Harry Potter series belongs to fantastic literature and it narrates the story of a young
wizard that has to defeat a villain and his supporters to achieve peace in the magical
world. All the books that form the series are written by JK Rowling and these are the
titles:

          1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)

          2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of the Secrets (1998)

          3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999)

          4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000)

          5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003)

          6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005)

          7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007)

There are also three more books about Harry Potter’s universe: Quidditch Through the
Ages (2001), Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2001) and The Tales of Beedle
The Bard (2007) but they will not be included in the analysis because they are not
connected with the main story.

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This particular saga has been chosen to observe the creation of new words, or
neologisms, because it has become one of the most important fantastic series in the last
years.

1.3. Neologisms in the saga
The story is developed in a world surrounded by magical elements. To designate those
elements, the author uses different strategies: on one hand, she reuses some terms or
words from European folklore or mythology (such as goblins, hippogriffs, dragons, etc.)
and she also creates new words to name her creations.

That new creation of words or neologisms will be the focal point in the study. The main
function that neologisms perform in languages is to provide them with dynamism,
maintaining them continually changeable because they incorporate new concepts to the
vocabulary already established. When neologisms appear in successful series as Harry
Potter ones, their influence in society is superior because they arrive to a good number
of people who recognize those new creations and, in some cases, they may start to
incorporate them into everyday language.

2. Theoretical Background
Before starting a detailed analysis, it is important to clarify some significant theoretical
notions related to the investigation.

2.1 Neologisms
According to Nordquist, “neologism” is defined as “a newly coined word, expression,
or usage.” (Nordquist, 2014). In Harry Potter books there are a great number of new
words to designate invented or real things.

One of the most recognizable authors in the study of neologisms and terminology,
Cabré, has elaborated a classification to distinguish different type of neologisms. She
recognizes three types of neologisms; Neologismos de forma (those related to the form
of the word or the morphological aspects), neologismos sintácticos (syntactic
neologisms) and neologismos semánticos (semantic neologisms). (Cabré, 2006: 231).

The first type of neologisms is related to the morphology of the word; they have been
subjected to a change in their form in order to create a new word (for instance, the word
“able” becomes its opposite ”unable” through the incorporation of a prefix, “un-“).

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The second type of neologisms is based on a change in the grammatical category of the
word (for instance, “Google” is a noun referred to the Internet searcher but, due to its
increasing popularity, nowadays it is also used as verb, , to describe the
action of searching something on Internet).

The last type of neologisms according to Cabré is the semantic neologism. It entails a
change in the meaning, but not necessarily in the form (for instance, the word “seeker”
is used on Harry Potter’s books to describe a tactical position in a magical sport,
changing completely the original meaning of the word referred to someone who is
dedicated to investigate).

Even though some words may experience a single change in their form, meaning or
grammatical category, the most common circumstance is that one only change results in
a variation of the two others.

This research is focused on the most representative neologisms in the saga. Therefore,
the first part of the compilation process will be centered on those words used to
designate new elements or objects in the books. Once they had been selected, they will
be classified and analyzed paying attention to the morphological, semantic or syntactic
changes that they have suffered.

Therefore, with the view of obtaining a full vision of neologisms, they are studied
through different approaches. The first approach in the study of neologisms in our
corpus is a terminological labor. After the identification of the representative
neologisms in the corpus, these are analyzed from a lexicographic point of view in order
to obtain a complete database of the neologisms in the saga. Finally, after the
identification and definition of the terms, the five most representative neologisms are
subjected to a semantic analysis. The purpose of that analysis is to demonstrate the open
choice principle that also occurs in neologisms.

However, before starting the analysis it is necessary to establish some basic notions that
form part of the investigation.

2.2 Terminology
Wüster, who is considered the father of terminology, was the first one that began to be
interested in the designations of concepts through non-ordinary words or terms. Thanks

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to his contribution, many authors have followed his line of research; nowadays,
terminology is one of the most important branches of linguistic.

Boutin-Quesnel defines “terminology” as follows: “Terminology is a systematic activity
in which subject field experts or terminologists/linguists (with subsequent revision of
their work by subject-field experts) draw up a list of terms covering in principle a whole
semantic field”. (Quoted in Maurais, 1993:112)

Therefore, keeping in mind the definition provided by Boutin-Quesnel, the first
objective of the analysis is to search for the most frequent neologisms with the idea of
elaborating a database.

2.3 Lexicography
Once the previous search has concluded, the lexicographic labor starts. According to the
lexicographer Svensén: “Lexicography is an activity which consists in observing,
collecting, selecting, analyzing and describing, in a dictionary, a number of lexical items
(words, word elements and word combinations) belonging to one or more languages”.
(Svensén, 2009: 2)

The purpose of analyzing them from a lexicographic perspective is to be able to make a
database that incorporates the main features of each neologism as their grammatical
category or its correspondent definition.

In order to obtain a complete database, it has been necessary a previous documentation
about the art of making dictionaries.

2.4 The art of making-dictionaries
With the view of obtaining a useful glossary of the new words or neologisms of the
Harry Potter books, it is important to consider some significant concepts.

According to Svensén, “A dictionary is a product of the culture in which it has come
into being. Its objective is not only satisfies the individual’s needs for information but to
become heritage for the succeeded generations”. (Svensén 2009:1)

For that purpose, dictionaries must include some important aspects such as the
grammatical category of the word and some semantic basic information.

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2.5 Semantics
The last part of the analysis is focused on the study of meaning in language. Neologisms are
new words that have not already acquired a connotative meaning because they are recently used
in a language; for that reason, it is important to pay attention to the collocative associations of
the neologisms to observe how they affect to the word. (Vizental 2009:24)

There are numerous theories developed from the basis of collocation; one of the most relevant
theories stated by Sinclair is the “open-choice principle”. (Sinclair, 1991:109).

2.6 Open-choice principle
Sinclair outlined the open-choice principle, stating that “language is based on this
paradigmatic principle by which grammatical patterns are selected to be part of the
language. It is the combinatorial force of lexical elements to co-exist”. (in Bayón
2013:83).

The majority of grammars hold this assessment. However, this principle has not been
demonstrated in neologisms.

3. Methodology and Corpus:

3.1 Characteristics of the corpus
The research is based on a corpus analysis, so it is important to point out some of the
main characteristics of this type of procedures.

Sinclair defines corpus as follows: “A corpus is a collection of pieces of language text
in electronic form, selected according to external criteria to represent, as far as possible,
a language or language variety as a source of data for linguistic research” (Sinclair,
2005:16).

The corpus linguistic analysis is a procedure that is gaining importance in the last years
due to the rapidity to analyze huge amounts of data in a short period of time.

The Harry Potter saga is composed by seven books. The table below consists on a
breakdown of the number of words in each book as well as the total amount of them that
form the corpus.

                                                12
Books                                                    Words

    Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone                 77,729

    Harry Potter and the Chamber of the Secrets              85,667

    Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban                 107,561

    Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire                      191,328

    Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix                260,439

    Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince                   169,869

    Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows                     198,813

                                                             Total of words: 1,091,433

However, in corpus linguistics it is not only important the full words but also any kind
of language sample. For that reason, the length of the corpus is established on tokens 1
instead of words, because even the most basic unit of information must be considered in
the analysis. Therefore, the length of the corpus has a finite size established on
1,122,368 tokens. Because of the similarities in the texts (author, time, place, style,
etc.), the corpora try to cover a parcel in English language.

3.2 Methodology.
In the part of the methodology there is a description of the analysis, mentioning how it
is accomplished. The results obtained from the analysis are interpreted in the section of
results. The study is divided into two types of analysis; qualitative and quantitative.

According to McEnery, the qualitative analysis consists in providing a detailed
description rather than quantification. Therefore, the qualitative analysis is based on the
observation that precedes the quantitative analysis.

1
    According to the Oxford Dictonary, in the field of computing “token” is “the smallest meaningful unit
of information in a sequence of data for a compiler”.

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The quantitative analysis is based on an objective classification of data in order to
obtain some subsequent conclusions; it deals with the numbers and statics of the
analysis. (McEnery and Wilson, 1996: 76).

In the quantitative analysis of the study, the books are inspected using a linguist tool,
AntConc®. According to its creator, Laurence Anthony, “AntConc is a freeware,
multiplatform tool for carrying out corpus linguistics research and dataǦdriven
learning”. (Anthony, 2011: 1).

The compilation is made with the view of obtaining a list of candidate terms. As it was
said before, Cabré states that there is more than one type of neologisms. She
distinguishes three types: morphological, semantic and syntactic neologisms
(morphological neologisms are those that are innovative in their morphology). (Cabré,
2006:231) The semantic ones are those which incorporate a new meaning for a word
that has already in the language and, finally, the syntactic ones are those that contain a
change in their grammatical category).

For this reason, in the analysis, neologisms are separated by types. With the view of
obtaining a real representativeness of the chosen neologisms, they have to appear at
least ten times in each book. That limit is established in order to avoid including in the
analysis those neologisms that have not a real presence in the saga.

When the manual process of identification and selection of candidate terms are
concluded, they are compared to larger online corpus databases of English language,
COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) and BNC (British National
Corpus). COCA and BNC are the most important corpora online in English language.
The first one contains 450 millions of words meanwhile BNC is formed by 100 million
words.

The objective of searching words in online corpus is to verify whether the words have
been previously used in other contexts and, therefore, if they must be discarded from the
group of morphological neologisms.

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4. Analysis.

4.1 Qualitative Analysis
The texts that form the corpus belong to fantastic literature; the grade of specialization
of them may not be considered specialized but, due to the use of fantastic terms and
meaning, they may not be ranged in general language.

The selection of corpus criterion is established based on external linguistic elements. It
has been decided to analyze only the seven books of the saga, excluding some extra
books of the same author, because they do not maintain a relationship with those
belonging to the saga.

The language used in the books is constructed; the author has revised her writings
before publishing them so they cannot be catalogued as naturally-spoken data. All the
texts have been originally written in English. Therefore, they share the same time and
place as the singularity of the author’s style. All of them are informal texts; there are a
lot of contracted words (“dunno” instead of “do not know”) or informal idioms as an
attempt to imitate the style of young people speaking.

The saga belongs to the fantastic literary genre so there are some notions which could
be difficult to understand for a person that does not know anything about the saga.
Therefore, the grade of specialization is slightly above the general language; however,
those (books that belong to the literary genre cannot be considered as specialized texts.

4.2 Quantitative Analysis
In order to determine which terms are considered as representative in books and which
are not, a list with the most frequent words in each book has been created.

Before starting the analysis, all the texts were adapted to machine readable form or .txt
format in order to be processed.

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I. Selection of neologisms

                   Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)

                              Total number of tokens: 80,635

Position in the     Frequency             Word                 COCA                   BNC
    ranking
      200                60             Quidditch                 37                     -

      489                22              Muggle                   31                     -

      564                19             Muggles                   34                     -

      567                19              Quaffle                   -                     -

      599                18               Snitch                 272                     4

      754                14               Seeker                 554                    78

      780                13             Bludgers                   3                     -

     1,006               10              Keeper                 1,764                 1,357

                                      Table 1: Results obtained from the analysis of the first book.

As it can be seen from the table above, the most frequent word is “quidditch” with 60
appearances. With the exception of “muggle”, the rest of the neologisms are related to
the magical sport: “quaffle”, “snitch” and “bludgers” are objects used in the game whilst
“seeker” and “keeper” are two positions in the game team.

                  Harry Potter and the Chamber of the Secrets (1998)

                              Total number of tokens: 88,545

Position in the     Frequency             Word                 COCA                   BNC
    ranking
      222                56              Muggle                   31                     -

      283                43             Quidditch                 37                     -

      377                33              Bludger                   2                     -

                                            16
556                21               Muggles                  31                    -

       865                13                 Snitch                272                    4

       903                12              Kwikspell                  -                    -

       911                12               Polyjuice                 2                    -

       983                11             Parseltongue                -                    -

                                      Table 2: Results obtained from the analysis of the second book.

In table 2, we can see that the most frequent word in the second book is “Muggle”
followed by some others related to the magical sport and different spells, abilities or
potions used in the books. This book does not increase the number of neologisms in
relation to the first one; in both cases there are eight neologisms.

                    Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999)
                               Total number of tokens: 110,914
Position in the      Frequency              Word                 COCA                  BNC
    ranking
      169                 95              Dementors                 4                     -

      275                 55              Dementor                  4                     -

      281                 54              Quidditch                 37                    -

      364                 41                Snitch                 272                    4

      409                 36               Boggart                  4                     4

      519                 28               Patronus                 14                    -

      545                 26               Muggle                   31                    -

      546                 26               Muggles                  34                    -

                                           Expecto
      702                 26                                        1                     -
                                          Patronum

      851                 16                Keeper                1,764                1,357

                                               17
870                16               Seeker                 554                    78

      949                14            Arithmancy                  1                     -

     1066                12              Bludger                   2                     -

     1,179               11              Quaffle                   -                     -

     1,297               10            Sneakoscope                 -                     -

                                      Table 3: Results obtained from the analysis of the third book.

In the third book, there is an increase of the number of neologisms, some of them
appearing for the first time. There are also compound terms as “expecto patronum” that
are considered as a single element because it is used to describe a concept.

There is a rise in the number of neologisms from eight in the second book to fourteen in
the third. It is also interesting that the most repetitive neologism is “Dementor” which
outnumbers “muggle” and “quidditch” in the number of appearances.

                      Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000)

                              Total number of tokens: 197,228

Position in the     Frequency             Word                 COCA                   BNC
    ranking
      291                91             Quidditch                 37                     -

      396                69             Triwizard                  4                     -

      458                57              Muggle                   31                     -

      644                37             Dementors                  4                     -

      707                34              Muggles                  34                     -

      715                34                Veela                   1                     -

      744                32              Horntail                  2                     -

                                             18
1,038                   22            Omnioculars                 -                     -

     1,165                   19              Pensieve                  -                     -

     1,207                   18              Imperius                  -                     -

     1,252                   17              Galleons                 56                    23

     1,359                   15                Auror                   -                     -

     1,402                   15               Portkey                  -                     -

     1,530                   13              Cruciatus                 -                     -

     1,696                   12               Skrewts                  -                     -

     1,700                   12                Snitch                 272                   4

     1,789                   11               Quaffle                  -                     -

     1,884                   10             Gillyweed                  -                     -

                                         Table 4: Results obtained from the analysis of the fourth book.

In the fourth book, the tendency of increasing the number of neologisms still continues.
In this book, some neologisms that do not have any appearance in the previous books
appear for the first time.

There is also a new tendency; in this book morphological neologisms (those words that
have not any appearance in COCA and BNC) are more frequent than semantic
neologisms.

                    Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003)
                                  Total number of tokens: 265,884
Position in the      Frequency                 Word                COCA                   BNC
    ranking
      323                    143            Quidditch                 37                     -

      393                    82             Dementors                  4                     -

                                                 19
809     39      Muggle                   31                     -

827     38   Occlumency                   -                     -

864     36       Snitch                 272                    4

937     33      Quaffle                   -                     -

1,015   30     Quibbler                   -                     -

1,053   29     Thestrals                  5                     -

1,150   26     Muggles                   34                     -

1,153   26     Pensieve                   -                     -

1,283   23     Patronus                  14                     -

1,363   22   Wizengamot                   -                     -

1,410   20       Auror                    -                     -

1,439   20      Keeper                 1,764                 1,357

1,473   19     Dementor                   4                     -

1,809   14      Aurors                    -                     -

1,893   14      Thestral                  -                     -

1,558   18     Galleons                  56                    23

1,910   13   Bowstruckle                  -                     -

2,061   12        Gurg                    -                     -

2,136   12     Triwizard                  4                     -

2,325   10   Dungbombs                    -                     -

             Table 5: Results obtained from the analysis of the fifth book.

                    20
The fifth book is the one which incorporates a major number of neologisms (there is a
total of twenty-one neologisms). It continues the predominance of the morphological
neologisms in comparison with the semantic ones.

In this case, there is also a new record in the number of appearances of “quidditch”, the
most frequent neologism in the book.

                    Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005)

                              Total number of tokens: 174,816

Position in the     Frequency             Word            COCA               BNC
    ranking
       52               112            Death Eaters             4              -

      154                58              Muggle                 31             -

      180                53             Quidditch               37             -

      230                46              Horcrux                1              -

      293                38             Horcruxes               2              -

      690                19               Auror                 -              -

      801                17              Galleons               56             23

      811                17               Inferi                1              -

      860                16               Keeper            1764             1357

      925                15              Muggles                34             -

     1,020               13               Aurors                -              -

     1,135               12              Imperius               -              -

     1,640               11               Snitch            272                4

     1,322               10             Dementors               4              -

                                            21
1,348               10              Inferius                  2                     -

                                      Table 6: Results obtained from the analysis of the sixth book.

This book represents a breaking point with the tendency of increasing the appearances
of neologisms; in this case not only does the number of new words decrease from
twenty one to fourteen, but also the frequency of the times that the most repetitive word
appears (from 143 to 112 appearances).
However, the most frequent compound, “death eaters”, has not appeared before in the
previous books.

                     Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007)

                              Total number of tokens: 204,346

Position in the     Frequency             Word                 COCA                   BNC
    ranking
       44               141            Death Eaters                4                     -

       98                93              Horcrux                   1                     -

      113                88              Muggle                   31                     -

      205                63            Death Eater                 3                     -

      270                51             Horcruxes                  2                     -

      343                42             Dementors                  4                     -

      366                41               Snitch                 272                    4

      487                32              Patronus                 14                     -

      511                31              Muggles                  34                     -

      607                26             Mudblood                   -                     -

      621                25            Deluminator                 -                     -

      856                19             Quidditch                 37                     -

                                             22
1,151               14            Polyjuice                 2                     -

     1,275               12              Accio                   9                     -

     1,458               11           Patronuses                  -                    -

     1,554               10           Firewhisky                  -                    -

                                  Table 7: Results obtained from the analysis of the seventh book.

This book contains the highest number of appearances of a neologism in relation to the
whole saga. Those words are “Death Eaters” and they appear 143 times in the book. It is
observable how the objects related to the magical sport has disappeared, being replaced
with magical objects or spells.

II. Verification of semantic neologism’s candidates
Following, all the neologisms have been divided into two groups: the first group was
composed by those words that do not have any appearance in the online corpora whilst
the second group contains the words that have one or more results in the searching. The
words that appear in at least one of them will be included in the group of the candidates
for semantic neologisms. The words which belong to the last group will be checked in
order to determine if they incorporate a new meaning to the word, or their definition
have has already been included in the dictionary.

The chosen tool to prove whether the meaning of the words had been previously used is
the Oxford Dictionary, and the definitions included in the following table have been
extracted verbatim from the source (see table 10). In the table, the grammatical category
of each neologism is included in order to determine whether there has been a variation
in its syntactic features. That change could only be possible in those words that already
existed in the English language because, differently from semantic neologisms, the
morphological ones are innovative in their meaning as in their morphology, so it is not
possible a change in a word that has not previously existed. For this reason,
morphological neologisms are not considered in that part of the analysis.

Once the neologisms were selected, there was a work to classify them into
morphological or non-morphological ones; this process of identification of each
neologism providing its correspondent meaning was developed with the help of the
“Oxford Dictionaries” online edition. Whilst morphological neologisms are new words

                                            23
created by J.K Rowling and, consequently, the relation between the referent and its
meaning never existed before, the non-morphological neologisms must be submitted to
a deeper analysis to see if the author provided any new meaning. In this part of the
analysis all the meanings or definitions of the searched words were taken into account
to observe if any of them corresponded with the new sense provided.

That information was necessary for the subsequent classification of neologisms not only
to know their meaning but also to discover which neologisms suffered a change in its
grammatical category, also known as syntactic neologisms. As a consequence, only the
neologisms dismissed from the morphological group were considered in the analysis,
because it was necessary to compare the new grammatical category with the previous
one to observe if there was any variation.

If there is a coincidence between the meanings, the neologism is discarded from the
group. On the contrary, if the new meaning is not contemplated before, it was included
in the classification as a semantic neologism.

                                             24
Morphological neologisms:
                                                    Candidates for semantic neologisms:
   1. Quaffle
                                                    1. Muggle
   2. Kwikspell
                                                    2. Quidditch
   3. Parseltongue
                                                    3. Snitch
   4. Sneakoscope
                                                    4. Bludger
   5. Omnioculars
                                                    5. Dementor
   6. Pensieve
                                                    6. Expecto Patronum
   7. Imperius
                                                    7. Patronus (pl. Patronuses)
   8. Auror
                                                    8. Boggart
   9. Portkey
                                                    9. Arithmancy
   10. Cruciatus
                                                    10. Triwizard
   11. Skrewts
                                                    11. Veela
   12. Gillyweed
                                                    12. Horntail
   13. Occlumency
                                                    13. Thestrals
   14. Quibbler
                                                    14. Death Eaters
   15. Wizengamot
                                                    15. Horcrux (pl. Horcruxes)
   16. Thestral
                                                    16. Inferi (pl. Inferius)
   17. Bowstruckle
                                                    17. Polyjuice
   18. Gurg
                                                    18. Accio
   19. Dungbombs
                                                    19. Seeker
   20. Imperius
                                                    20. Keeper
   21. Mudblood
                                                    21. Galleons
   22. Deluminator
                                                         Table 9: Resume of semantic neologisms’
   23. Firewhisky                                                                     candidates
Table 8: Resume of morphological neologisms.

                                               25
Appearance
                                                                                      Semantic
Word          in Oxford       Definition                  New Meaning
                                                                                      neologism
              dictionaries
                              Noun: A person who is
                                                          Noun: A person
                              not conversant with a
1. Muggle2        9                                       without magical                 9
                              particular activity or
                                                          powers.
                              skill.
                              - Verb: Steal               Noun: Magical object
3. Snitch         9                                       used in Quidditch               9
                              - Noun: An informer
                                                          (magical sport).
                              - Noun: A scrounger         Noun: Magical Object
5. Bludger        9           - Noun: An idle or lazy     used in Quidditch               9
                              person                      (magical sport).
6.                                                        Noun: Magical creature
              X                                                                           9
Dementor                                                  that controls prisons
7. Expecto                                                Noun: A spell used to
              X                                                                           9
Patronum                                                  repel dementors.
                                                          Noun: The magical
8. Patronus
                                                          entity that emerges in
(pl.          X                                                                           9
                                                          Expecto Patronum’s
Patronuses)
                                                          spell.
                              Noun: An evil or            Noun: An evil or
9. Boggart        9                                                                       X
                              mischievous spirit.         mischievous spirit.
                                                          Noun: It is a discipline
10.                                                       which studies the
              X                                                                           9
Arithmancy                                                relation between
                                                          numbers and their

2
 Origin: 1990s: from mug + -le; used in the Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling to mean 'a person
without magical powers'.

                                               26
magical connotations.
                                                 Noun: It is the name of
11.                                              a contest in which
             X                                                                9
Triwizard                                        participate 3
                                                 competitors.
                                                 Noun: It is a race that
                                                 mixes some human
12. Veela    X                                   features and some            9
                                                 characteristics of
                                                 sirens.
                     Noun: A large wasp-
                     like sawfly which
                     deposits its eggs inside
13.                                              Noun: It is a kind of
                 9   trees and timber. It has                                 9
Horntail                                         dragon from Hungary.
                     a long egg-laying tube
                     but no sting. Also called
                     woodwasp.
                                                 Noun: It is a magical
14.                                              creature which is
             X                                                                9
Thestrals                                        believed that provides
                                                 bad luck.
                                                 Noun: It is the term to
15. Death
             X                                   designate the                9
Eaters
                                                 antagonist’s followers.
16.
                                                 Noun: It is an object in
Horcrux
             X                                   which has been left part     9
(pl.
                                                 of someone’s soul.
Horcruxes)
17. Inferi                                       Noun: It is a dead
(pl.         X                                   creature which comes         9
Inferius)                                        into life through a spell.
18.                                              Noun: It is a kind of
             X                                                                9
Polyjuice                                        potion to obtain

                                     27
someone’s image.
                                                          Noun: It is a spell that
19. Accio    X                                                                              9
                                                          allows moving things.
                            From “to seek”(verb);         Noun: It is a position in
20. Seeker       9          person who attempts to        Quidditch (magical                9
                            find (something)              sport).
                            Noun: short for               Noun: It is a position in
21. Keeper       9          goalkeeper or                 Quidditch (magical                X
                            wicketkeeper.                 sport).
                            Noun: A sailing ship in
22.                                                       Noun: It is the coin
                 9          use from the XV to the                                          9
Galleons                                                  used in magical world.
                            XVIII.
                                            Table 10: Results of the searching in Oxford Dictionary

The first relevant thing that we can observe from the previous table is that only two
words are dismissed from the candidates for semantic neologisms. These words are
“boggart” whose meaning shares a lot of similarities to the one given in the book, and
“keeper” whose meaning can be extrapolated from reality to fiction (in both cases, it is
referred to a position in a team sport so there is not an innovation in the meaning).

                                  Table 11: Results extracted from the analysis of HP3 in AntConc.

From the results extracted from the analysis, it is observable the similarities between the
meaning of “boggart” in the books (it is defined as a “shape-shifter that takes the shape
of whatever frightens us most”) and the one provided in Oxford Dictionary as a
mischievous creature.

                                  Table 12: Results extracted from the analysis of HP1 in AntConc.

                                             28
The same happens with “keeper”. Although in the books it is used to refer a position in
the magical sport “quidditch”, the meaning of the word is the same that the one given in
Oxford Dictionaries. Therefore, the reason for the exclusion of those two words is the
similarity of their meanings in the saga and the Oxford Dictionary, so there is not a real
semantic innovation.
On the other hand, many words that appear in online corpora as COCA have not any
results in dictionaries. It is clearly observable through an example; the word “horcrux”
was a result in the COCA, but when it is searched in the dictionary, it does not have any
results. The reason for this fact is the incorporation of a great number of entries that
belongs to media or fictional texts in the online corpora.
The use of those types of texts in online corpora as COCA provokes that the results
obtained in the search from their database are self-referential; the results extracted from
COCA are referred to Harry Potter books. For this reason, the words have not been
dismissed from the analysis because they have their origin in the saga.

                                          Table 13: Capture of the results for “Horcrux” in COCA

It is observable in the table 13 that the word “horcrux” does not appear in a different
context from the Harry Potter one; the article in which the word is mentioned is
referring to the books written by JK Rowling.

                                            29
Another important aspect in the analysis is that all the new coined words are nouns.
These neologisms name new creatures or objects from the magical world but also
elements that already existed in our culture. It is also interesting the limited number of
syntactic neologisms presented in the saga. That phenomenon of derivation from one
grammatical category to another is known as transposition and it is observable in
translation studies in which, in some occasions, it is necessary a shift in the grammatical
category from the source text to the target or translated text. (Newmark, 1988: 85).

Regarding the similarities in the morphology of words, there are some patterns that the
author has followed to create the new words. On one side, there are some transparent
words (those words whose meaning could be assumed although one does not know the
word) as the case of “firewhisky”, a neologism that is referred to a typical drink that
causes a burning sensation when you drink it. In that group there is a tendency to
compound words to create a new one (for instance, “death eaters” is the result of joining
to existing words).

On the other side, there are opaque words as “skrewts” which meaning cannot be
assumed by its morphology. Within the opaque words, the author follows a strategy to
create some of the words. She uses Latin endings as in the case of “imperius” or
“cruciatus” when she is naming some spells. The fact of using the same endings may
transmit to the readers the sensation that these words are related between them.

Regarding their morphology, the analysis produces some interesting results. The
majority of the neologisms created by JK Rowling are composed by 2 syllables; it
means that the majority of these neologisms are not as long as the new terms created in
some fields such as medicine or biology. It is important to remember that these books
are addressed to a young public, for whom too elaborated words may be difficult to
remember and identify.

                                            30
1 Syllable
                                                                                 2 Syllables
                                                                                 3 Syllables
                                                                                 4 Syllables
                                                                                 5 Syllables

                                             Table 14: Classification of neologisms by syllables.

Having all these considerations in mind, the results of the analysis are interpreted in
order to observe some common features that are present in all the neologisms and,
considering all that, to hypothesize about the features that a new word must accomplish
in order to be accepted in dictionaries.

At this point, the word the word “muggle” deserves a special attention: this word is the
only one neologism created by JK Rowling that has achieved enough repercussion to be
admitted in the Oxford Dictionaries.

To conclude this section, there is a list of final neologisms. It is important to remember
that the neologisms “seeker” and “snitch” are included in both subdivisions, the
semantic and the syntactic one, because they accomplish the conditions to be in both
groups. On the other side, a new word always results in a new meaning even if they are
not included in semantic neologisms.

                                           31
Semantic          Syntactic
Morphological neologisms:
                                                    neologisms:       Neologisms:
                                                                      1. Snitch
   1. Muggle                 19. Quaffle            1. Snitch
                                                                      2. Seeker
   2. Kwikspell              20. Expecto Patronum   2. Bludger
   3. Parseltongue           21. Patronus           3. Horntail
   4. Sneakoscope            22. Triwizard          4. Seeker
   5. Omnioculars            23. Veela              5. Galleons
   6. Pensieve               24. Horntail           6. Death Eaters
   7. Imperius               25. Thestrals
   8. Auror                  26. Horcrux
   9. Portkey                27. Inferi
   10. Cruciatus             28. Polyjuice
   11. Skrewts               29. Accio
   12. Gillyweed             30. Arithmancy
   13. Occlumency            31. Imperius
   14. Quibbler              32. Mudblood
   15. Wizengamot            33. Deluminator
   16. Thestral              34. Firewhisky
   17. Bowstruckle           35. Quidditch
   18. Gurg                  36. Dungbombs
Table 15: List of final neologisms.

                                               32
III. Study of the most frequent neologisms’ collocations
Finally, when all the neologisms have been classified into the different groups, the
analysis of collocations starts. In this section, the neologisms are analyzed in order to
observe which are the most frequent collocates of a selected number of neologisms in
order to discover if the open-choice principle occurs also in neologisms. For that part of
the analysis, only the neologisms that constitute the half of the total appearances of
neologisms in all the books are taken into account.

For that purpose, the first stage consists on knowing which neologisms are the most
common ones throughout the books. Having in mind that they have to be representative
of the whole saga, they have to appear in at least two books out of the seven that form
the Harry Potter series. The number of appearances of each neologism has been added
to observe the total number of times that each one appears in the saga.

The collocations that are considered in the analysis are those which are immediately
before or after the key word or neologism. In that part of the analysis, the different
tokens of words are grouped by types. That is, the words that share the same lexeme
were grouped as one type (for instance; “dog”, “dogs” and “Dog” constitute three
tokens but only one type because they share the same lexical characteristics).

 600

 500

 400

 300

 200
                                                                      Total of Appearences
 100

    0
            Horcrux
            Muggle

             Quaffle

           Imperius
          Dementor

           Pensieve

             Seeker
        Death Eaters

           Patronus
          Quidditch

              Auror

           Galleons
              Snitch

            Bludger

           Polyjuice

                              Table 16: Representation of the most frequent neologisms in the saga

                                            33
The most important neologism in the Harry Potter books is “muggle” within 518
appearances throughout the saga. The second most recurrent neologism in the books is
“quidditch” (463 appearances), followed by “dementors” (340 appearances).

                                                                                Muggle
                                                                                Quidditch
                                                                                Dementor
                                                                                Death Eaters
                                                                                Horcrux
                                                                                Snitch
                                                                                Patronus
                                                                                Auror
                                                                                Quaffle
                                                                                Bludger
                                                                                Galleons

                                                  Table 17: Distribution of neologisms in the saga

The importance of these three neologisms in the saga is unarguable; they represent more
than half of the total appearances of neologisms in the books. For that reason, the
chosen terms analyzed in order to demonstrate if the open-choice principle is also
applicable in neologisms are “muggle”, “quidditch” and “dementor”.

IV. Open-choice principle in neologisms
At first sight, the three words may have different connotations; “quidditch” and
“Dementor” have really influential connotations. The first one is the common sport
between wizards so it is normally seen as positive, the second one is referred to evil
creatures in charge of guarding prisons, so its connotations, in principle, are negative.

However, the word used to designate people without magical powers, “muggle”, seems
neutral because it is not directly related to positive or negative elements. Through an
analysis of the correlative collocates of the three words, the most common collocates for
each word or those which have been especially interesting are observable.

                                            34
In the analysis there are different sections: the acronyms “R1” is referred to the lexical
words that precede the key word, whilst “R2” is referred to the collocate that follows the
neologism.
The initials “HP” correspond to the abbreviation of “Harry Potter” and the number that
follows them is the identification for each one of the books.

                                                 Muggle
                    R1                           R2                    Observations
                 Adjective             Noun           Verb
                   Great
                                      Clothes

                  Biggest
                                       Sweet
  HP1                                                           There are 3 adjectives, 8
                                      Money
                                                                nouns and no verb.
                                      Family
                                       World
                   Feeble
                                     Children
                                       Chess
                                      Towns

                    Mad                Stuff
                                                      Trick
                  Curious              - Born
                   Lousy             Business
                   Prying              Shop
                                                                There is an increase in
                Ridiculous           Artifacts                  the number of adjectives;
  HP2              Filthy             Rubbish                   some     of   them    have
                                      Money           Clean     negative connotations.
                                       Street
                 Common                 Eye
                                      Camera
                                     Parentage

  HP3              Dark                World

                                            35
Real          Police       Study
        Anti-         -Torture
         Real         -Lovers
                       -Born
HP4
                    Precautions
        Anti-
                      Security
         Poor        Relations
                     -Hunting
        Anti-        Pranksters
      Strapping       Towns
                     Remedies
                     Medicine
HP5                   Nutters
        Flying
                     Artifacts
       Sneaking
                      Suburb
                    Perspective
       Innocent
      Handsome         Killer
      Dirt-veined      -Born
        Filthy        Rubbish
                                              There are 3 adjectives
HP6      Dark          Attire        Kill
                                              negatives to one positive.
                      Attacks
                      -Lover
                       -Hater
        Anti-        Tendency      Maiming

                    Contraptions   Murdered
                                              Great    use     of    the
HP7                                 Forced    combination     “Muggle-
                       -Born
                                              born”
                     Slaughter
                     Dwellings

                           36
Blood
                                      Torture
                                                      Table 18: Frequent collocations of “Muggle”.

The most repeated neologism in the books throughout the saga is “muggle”. It is the
term to designate a person without magical abilities and it is presented in all the books
as one of the most important neologisms.
In the previous table, “muggle” has been taken as a keyword. In the analysis only those
terms that incorporate a lexical meaning have been considered collocates, in order to
observe how they influenced the keyword.
One of the most common collocations for “Muggle” is followed by a noun to create a
compound noun; there are some examples as “Muggle-clothes”, “Muggle-money”,
“Muggle-chess”, etc. especially in the first books.
In the second book, there is an increase of the R1 collocates; it is observable a rising in
the use of adjectives to qualify the keyword, although the nouns in R2 position still
maintain a fundamental role.
In the third book there is a descent in the use of the keyword and that is reflected in the
collocations; there is also a descent in the modifiers surrounding the word. It is
interesting that there is equilibrium in the R1 and R2 collocations.
From the fourth book onwards, the tendency of a major number of R2 than R1
collocations comes back as it has already happened in the firsts two books. The most
used combination with the keyword “muggle” is the post-modifier “-born”, merging the
compound “muggle-born”.

                                            37
Quidditch
Books   R1                        R2                Observations
        Adjective       Verb      Noun       Verb
                                  Teams             Large use of
                                  Trials            nouns after the
                                  Cup               keyword to
HP1
        Excellent                 Field             create
        Good                      Player            compound
                                  Season            words

                                  Captain
                                  Team
        Quality                   Supplies
        Favorite                  Team
HP2                               Robes
                                  Stadium
                                  Teacher
        Late-running              Practice
        Quality                   Supplies
HP3     Good                      Final
                                  Practice
        Favorite        Play      Team
        House           Love      Talk
                                  Player
                                  Match
                                  Practice
HP4
                                  Captain
                                  Cup

                                  Stadium

        Good                      League
HP5                     Play
        International             Team

                                   38
Tryouts
                                            Players
                                            Practice
                                            Cup
                                            Tickets
                                            Commentators
                                            Robes
                                            Players
HP6          Final
                                            Lectures
                                            Injury
                                            Game
                                            Pitch
                                            Knowledge
                                            Match
HP7          Great
                                            Player
                                            Hero
                                                     Table 19: Frequent collocations of “Quidditch”.

In the previous table, “quidditch” (the term used to designate the magic sport) is
analyzed. As it happens with “muggle”, the keyword is used especially in the creation
of compound nouns.
It is interesting that there is not any result for the position of verbs in R2; however, there
are three occurrences for verbs in R1 position.
The table does not suffer great variations throughout the books. In all of them, there is a
major use of nouns following the keyword than adjectives that modify it. In the case of
adjectives, the principal keynote is a positive feature in most of them.

                                             39
Dementor

            R1                        R2
Books                                                                 Observations
            Adjective Verb            Noun              Verb
HP1                                                                   No hits
HP2                                                                   No hits
            Anti-        Guard
HP3                                   Lesson
            Real         Affect
                         Bury
HP4                      Enter                          Destroy
                         Place
                         Out-of-
                                                        Swipe
            Ruddy        control
HP5
            Invisible                                   Attack
            Putrid       Repel
                                      Attacks
HP6                      Tackle                         Guard
                                      Essay
                                                        Blow
                                      Flight
HP7                      Repel
                                                        Swoop
                                      Gliding
                                                    Table 20: Frequent collocations of “Dementor”.

In the case of “dementor”, there are some characteristics that may attract our attention.

A “dementor” is an evil creature whose function is to guard the wizards’ prison. In the
first case, the word does not have any appearances in the first two books of the series,
which is surprising because the keyword is the third most used one in the saga.

Another important characteristic in that table in relation to the previous ones is the use
of verbs. In the case of “dementor”, verbs constitute an important element because they
are widely used in R1 and R2 position.

                                               40
Unlike what happens with the other two keywords, the use of nouns in R2 position it is
not so frequent. There are not any compounds with the keyword. Regarding adjectives,
there is a negative tone in most of them such as the case of “putrid”.

4.3 Results
One of the most important revelations extracted from the analysis is the addition of the
neologism “Muggle” in the Oxford Dictionary as a result of the increasing importance
that this word had in the series. The word is widely used in the books so it could be
established that the first step that a neologism must accomplish to be officially accepted
as a new coined word is an extensive use of it.
That fact is important not only to observe the importance that J.K Rowling’s creation
has, but also to see through a sample how languages work. First, a new word is
invented; thereafter, by the use and the broadcasting, it becomes socially accepted and
finally, it is officially accepted by an important organ in the correct use of English
language as it is the Oxford Dictionary.

On the other side, once the analysis has concluded, it is important to denote some
features that are accomplished in neologisms. The first common characteristic among
them is their grammatical category. All the neologisms studied in the analysis appear as
nouns; that fact could be due to the openness of this particular grammatical category in
which it is easier to introduce new terms or words than in others. Although it is not
observable in the study of books, it is observable that some neologisms that appear as
nouns, after an extensive use of them, they are gradually derived to other grammatical
categories, such as adjectives or verbs (for instance, the noun “Google” referred to the
Internet browser has derived into a verb, “to google”, to define the action of searching
something in the net).

On the contrary, some words that belong to other grammatical categories can turn into
nouns due to a transposition process (as it is mentioned in the methodology section).
That is the case of “snitch” and “seeker”; “snitch” comes from the verb “to snitch” and
its use as a noun derives from it. The same happens with “seeker”, which becomes a
noun by the extensive use of the verb “to seek”.

Another common feature that the majority of Rowling’s neologisms share is that they
are short words. From the 41 neologisms analyzed, 18 of them only have 2 syllables,
followed by those which only have 3 syllables, have resulted in a total of 15 words.

                                            41
That shortness in words may be made on purpose; these words are addressed to a
general public who would probably forget the neologisms if they are too elaborated
words.

Apart from their shortness, the author avoids to create a conjunct of words (more than
one) to refer to a concept. It means that she uses one word to name one concept,
although there are some cases, such as “expecto patronum” and “death eaters”, in which
the neologism is formed by two words instead of one.

It is also observed that the dissemination of a term may result in a variation of its
meaning. For example, “muggle” is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “A person who
is not conversant with a particular activity or skill” but that is not the definition
provided in the books. In the context of a magical world, “muggle” is used to designate
those people who do not have any magical skills. When we compare the two definitions,
an adaptation in the meaning of the word can be appreciated, although it maintains its
basic features.

The performance of the neologisms in the saga also brings some conclusions. In order to
analyze that performance, neologisms have been classified into morphological, semantic
or syntactic categories to observe how they are distributed throughout the books.

It has been observable a tendency of increasing the number of neologisms as the saga
advances. That increase in the total number of neologisms was also accompanied by a
rise in the use of morphological neologisms and a descent in semantic ones.

                                           42
18
 16
 14
 12
 10
  8
  6
  4
  2
  0
            HP1      HP2         HP3         HP4          HP5          HP6           HP7
                  Morphological Neologisms              Semantic Neologisms

                                                 Table 12: Distribution of neologisms in the saga

That spread of the morphological neologisms in the second part of the books can be due
to several reasons: the readers who have reached the fourth book of the saga are able to
understand and recognize some terms that had already appeared in the previous books.

Those readers could be compared to semi-experts in the field because they are able to
relate the new words or neologisms to their concepts, and also to have in mind those
words that have already appeared in the books.

That is why the language used in the books cannot be described as general; although it
belongs neither to a specific field as it could be, for instance, economics or biology, the
tone of specialization could be placed in a middle stage, considering it as semi-expert
language.

From the section of collocations, there are some results from the previous tables that
must be analyzed and interpreted.

There is a great use of nouns following the keyword to create new compounds. It may
be due to the desire of the author of avoiding the creation of new terms that may
confuse the readers. Harry Potter books are addressed, mostly, to young people, so the
excessive use of neologisms may result in difficulties to follow the story. For that

                                            43
reason, instead of creating new words to designate the muggles’ money or clothes, for
instance, she uses the compounding with the keyword.

The same happens with the keyword “quidditch”; there are a lot of nouns following the
keyword to name the robes, matches or leagues related with the magical sport to avoid
the creation of different words to name all the objects.

The relations between the keywords and their collocates also produce some interesting
results. In the table of the collocations for “muggle”, it is noticeable a change in the tone
from the first book to the last ones. The first book has some R1 adjectives as “great”,
“biggest” and “feeble”; however, as the story advances, the tone of crudeness intensifies
the negative connotations of the adjectives that modify the keyword (some of the
harsher adjectives are “filthy”, “lousy” or “dirt-veined” amongst others). That fact could
be due to the neutrality of the term; being “muggle” is not necessarily something good
or bad. For that reason, the collocations that modify the word are so important; they can
transmit the idea of something good or evil by the collocative meaning that “muggle”
acquires.

That tendency of a progressive pejorative use of the term is also observable in the R1
nouns; the results from the first book showed a group of nouns without major
implications. They are words that designate common objects in our world as money,
family, chess, etc.

However, in the second book that use of neutral nouns changes with the incorporation
of some negative words as “rubbish” until the last two books, in which those nouns with
negative connotations became in the most used ones.

The same occurs with the verbs; the last two books incorporate some verbs as “to
maim”, “to kill”, “to murder” or “to force” so the keyword is influenced unavoidably
with their negative implications.

Those types of collocations are a reflection of the story itself; the term “muggle” is
deteriorated as the story advances because muggles are believed to be inferior than
wizards.

In the case of “quidditch”, apart from the nouns, the keyword is also surrounded by
adjectives in R1 position. However, unlike what happens in the case of “muggle”, there

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